Republican candidates for the Alabama Supreme Court — except for incumbent Tom Parker — have significantly out-raised and outspent their Democratic opponents, according to campaign finance reports filed this week.

Spending on court races has dipped this year from record-setting amounts spend in prior years, but seats on the state’s appellate courts remain highly prized commodities.

Campaign reports show that Kelli Wise, a Court of Criminal Appeals judge who is seeking an open seat on the high court, raised and spent the most of any candidate. She took in $581,295 during the 40-day reporting period and spent $591,283.

Those totals dwarfed Wise’s Democratic opponent, Birmingham lawyer Rhonda Chambers, who raised $65,840 during the period and spent $240,934.

Chambers was quick to attack the source of Wise’s campaign cash — some 89 percent of which came from a handful of political action committees. The largest, the pro-business Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee, contributed $300,000. The Business Council of Alabama’s PAC, Progress PAC, gave another $120,000.

“We have an unfortunate perception in our state that at the Alabama Supreme Court, justice is for sale,” Chambers said in a prepared statement. “It certainly doesn’t help when Kelli Wise thinks it’s appropriate to run a campaign funded entirely by a few special interest groups.”

Wise noted Chambers turned in her campaign finance report days earlier, leaving her nearly a week to raise additional funds. Candidates in past years have waited until after the final pre-election report to list hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of donations. Those donations do not have to be reported until the following January, however.

“We have no idea how many contributions she’s getting,” Wise said.

Wise also dismissed the notion she he beholden to groups writing large checks.

“I certainly have not been during my experience on the (criminal appeals) court,” she said. “Contributions have never affected my decisions. They’ve always been based on the law.”

Incumbent Republican Mike Bolin, who is running against Montgomery lawyer Tom Edwards, reported a similar fundraising haul. He took in $543,864, also mostly from the Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee and the Progress PAC. Together, they contributed $390,000, or 72 percent of the total. He spent $580,872, according to his report.

For the entire year, that makes more than $1.17 million raised and almost $1.2 million spent.

Edwards raised $49,350 and spend $88,475 during the period. His fundraising totals for the year come to $175,922. He said the chasm between Bolin and himself owes not so much to a disparity in the number of donors.

“It’s just the amounts of the contributions are to astronomically tilted in his direction,” he said.

Bolin spokesman Scott Stone said it is hypocritical for Edwards to complain about special interest money because he has raised funds from plaintiffs’ lawyers, the Alabama Teachers Association’s PAC and the Democratic Party. Oftentimes, he said, trial lawyers conceal their contributions by passing them through multiple PACs and the Democratic Party.

“We’re very proud of the wide-ranging support Justice Bolin has received ... We’re very happy to have their support,” he said. “The people who support us don’t hide it.”

The only Democratic Supreme Court candidate who outspent his opponent was Mac Parsons, a Jefferson County circuit judge who reported raising $90,675 and spending $177,038 during the 40-day period.

Parker, who does not have the support of the Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee, raised $55,300 and spent $106,176 during the same period, according to his finance report.

“This is nothing out of the ordinary for us. I’m pretty sure Justice Parker has been outspent in every election he has faced,” he said in a statement.

Parsons said in a statement that he has no interest in raising millions of dollars because he does not need much money to highlight the fact that Parker “doesn’t do his job” and “doesn’t pay his taxes.” Those are references to statistics showing that Parker has the biggest case backlog on the court and liens placed against his deceased father’s estate, of which the justice is the administrator.

“It didn’t take a political campaign to turn Tom Parker into a joke,” Parsons said. “He did that all by himself.”

Parker has said that voters care about the quality of a judge’s rulings, not the quantity. And he has threatened to sue Parsons over “slanderous” statements regarding the tax allegations.